[thelist] Redoing a site's design from the grounds up

[aardvark]

> From: "s t e f" <notabene at members.evolt.org>
>
> > > I've noticed that the more a site looks professional, the
> > less people
> > > tend to write to its owner to congratulate/comment/criticize.
> >
> > interesting observation...
>
> I'm sure I'm not the only one to experience this, aren't I?
[...]

it's hard to say without looking at my collection... wait, i can do that... yes, i
get a few emails a week from people looking at my personal site (most of
those are asking for help on my tutorials)... i only get about 1 email a month
from the algonquin site (but at least they aren't looking for help)...

> >  personal site,
> > however, needs to be somewhat carefully considered in my case... as
> > a business owner, i have to expect people will come to my personal
> > site to see what i have to offer, see if i'm for real, or a
> > neo-nazi, or whatever...
>
> That's a different POV. In my case my site is er... a webzine, with
> articles and stuff, and if people want to see my resume it's another
> page entirely.

well, i've got no resume... again, i defer to my bio on my company site (i
should update the bio)... i assume people come to my site either a) to read
some technical article they found in google or b) because they are a friend of
some sort and wanna see what i'm up to...

if they want to hire me, i gently guide them to the algonquin site...

[...]
> > instead, i show some of my other capabilities -- [...]
>
> That's what I was kind of thinking. Your reply plus Heather's
> especially give me a better general direction for the redesign.

you looking for *design* ideas, or more general than that?  trying to figure out
what content you'll have?  what features?

my take is anything that can show off what you do, and do it well... but of
course, i always run into sites where the kid who built it is so proud he/she
learned how to export slices out of IR (130k, just saw one like this last night)
that it turns me off...  there *is* that danger, but if you build a site to be
accessible, and someone is turned off by it, is that so bad?

> > i've actually put more design time into photo galleries of
> > day trips with
> > friends...  i wonder if that means anything...
>
> Yup. That you love people more than code ;-))))

no, that's not it...

> A big thank you to all who took time to reply to my somewhat
> ill-expressed question :-)

i didn't even know there was a question, i just like to talk about myself... so
much so, that i even made a new photo for my evolt.org bio.... how sad is
that?

anyway, ask more of these, it's interesting to read how others approach their
designs, considering we've all got different goals with our personal sites...